Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Patriotism? Really? “I don’t care, and you’re not giving me much of a choice.” Abdul dropped the Sir on purpose. A small slight but it was all he had.

  You signed on for a four-year term of service.

  “I got killed!” Abdul’s guts twisted, he tasted sour bile. Wait. Guts? What were they letting him feel and why?

  Under current NATU legislation we are not required to make use of your Scan. If you are not willing or able to take part in this project, we’ll unplug you and move on.

  Unplug. The word sent icy fear trickling down his spine. Death. The end of everything. Fear? Spine? What were they doing? All this sudden emotion made thinking difficult. What had the officer said before that? Current legislation.

  Volunteer and you’ll serve a twenty-year contract. When the term is up, you’re a free man. Free Scan, I mean. The demand in the public sector surpasses the military’s. You’ll have no trouble finding lucrative work. The choice is yours.

  Lucrative work? Like getting a job should be his fucking priority? And twenty years. To Abdul, seventeen years old, it was an eternity. “State-sanctioned slavery or death. That’s not much of a choice.” Really, it was no choice at all. They had him and he knew it. And if he knew it, they knew he knew it.

  It’s more choice than someone killed by a Cyrba mine usually gets.

  One thought gave Abdul a glimmer of hope. That they’d picked him suggested they didn’t know him at all. How many times had he been written up for insubordination? He couldn’t possibly remember.

  Twenty years in a combat chassis, a walking battle tank. A state-of-the-art killing machine. How many times had he played those VRs?

  “Sir, yes, Sir! I would like to volunteer, Sir!” Asshole.

  You’ll be promoted to Gunnery Sergeant with the requisite pay grade increase to E-7.

  “I died and got a raise?”

  Only in the Marines, son.

  “Ooh Rah.”

  They were going to regret this.

  CHAPTER FIVE: Wednesday, August 1st, 2046

  The scanning team completed their work and moved on to their next patient. Meanwhile Doctor Petra Zosimadis, Chief of Staff of the District of Washington’s only NATU-sanctioned scanning facility, stepped into Neural Imaging Room Three. Was it really him? She certainly hoped so. If the CEO of the largest manufacturer of scanning and Scan storage equipment in the North American Trade Union was unwilling to undergo the scanning process—as the press and rumors implied—then she needed to rethink her advice to Mom. If he did it on the sly, well that was something totally different.

  Where the halls smelled of mint and money and everything was a professional shade that stopped short of hospital white, the pre-op room was stainless steel and the kind of white that made her think she’d gone blind. The lights hummed to life as she entered, but the gear, noting she wasn’t a technician, remained quiescent. No barbaric tools cluttered the room. This kind of delicate work was far beyond what could be done with rude fingers and hands. A white plastic and metal box sat nestled in the scanning gear, the transparent front of the box too low for her to see into. Petra couldn’t help herself and glanced to the door. At worst, being caught would be embarrassing; she held herself above the office rumor mill and didn’t want to have to explain her reasons for being here.

  If Mark Lokner trusts the technology, then so can Mom. If he didn’t, all bets were off. It was that simple.

  As Petra ducked down to examine the white box she noticed an unusual metallic scent beneath the disinfectant. She’d have to mention it to the maintenance staff.

  The front panel was a transparent polymer of some kind and she had a clear view of the head within. The face was pale and gray and the clean-shaven cheeks hung slack. All smells were forgotten. No doubt, this was the head of Mark Calvin Lokner, founder and CEO of M-Sof. Petra sighed. It was going to be okay, Mom could be scanned. Petra wasn’t going to lose her.

  She checked the Scan’s viability score and nodded happily. 98.21% accuracy, not bad at all. It was well above the widely-accepted 95% minimum. No one would be able to tell the Scan from the original even in extended conversation. Scans with less than 95% accuracy were never pretty, and with the Holoptigraphic Standing Wave-Point Consciousness unviable from the moment of creation, the Scan would collapse. The unlucky few that didn’t developed all manner of neuroses, memory gaps, and unpredictable personality distortions.

  Petra studied the face. Something compelling about death demanded her attention. She’d seen more heads in boxes than most but still had to look. She examined Mark Lokner’s scowl of concentration. His hair, graying around the temples, was neat and kempt.

  What the hell is that smell?

  Petra wrinkled her nose and straightened. If someone was picking up the head for burial she wanted this cleaned up and smelling aseptic and professional.

  “Have arrangements been made to pick up the head,” she asked her palm-comp, “or are we delivering it?”

  Neither, she was told.

  Unusual, but not unheard of. Some people didn’t care what happened to their bodies after they’d been scanned.

  “When is the Scan scheduled for pickup?”

  The Scan had already been picked up, she was informed. It was shipped out seconds after the process had been completed.

  Weird. No way she missed a scheduled pickup or delivery. She had to sign off on every single Scan that left the premises.

  That metallic scent really bothered her. “What the heck is that smell? Is this some new cleaning agent?”

  ***

  The room, aware it was wired with aluminothermic nanocomposite explosives, checked to see if Petra’s clearance was high enough to be informed. It wasn’t.

  ***

  This, thought Mark Lokner sitting in his office in Redmond, is something new. The desk looked like the same desk. The shoes were the same shoes. He’d paid four thousand Au for these shoes. No, not these shoes. These weren’t real shoes, they were the digital simulation of shoes. Did that mean they were free? He tapped the top of the desk and it reacted, displaying a tight-packed wall of icons which he ignored. No, this wasn’t his real desk.

  “Here I am,” he said. “Here I am not.” He was in Redmond, but not in his office at his desk. In real reality he was buried somewhere under the Research and Development building at the heart of the M-Sof campus. Mark preferred the term campus to grounds or facility. People learned things here. They learned things that made money, but more importantly they learned things that would shape humanity’s future.

  Finally, a chance to give back to the people. A chance to heal ancient wounds and set humanity on the path to perfection. Religion and politics were diseases. Even money, that great builder of civilizations, was part of that sickness. Of what use are such trappings when you were immortal and could define your reality like a god?

  Reality was such a chaotic mess. One look at the news; starvation, poverty, and war unending. He would fix all of that. Virtuality was the answer to everything. The future held perfection.

  Mark touched his face, feeling the smooth cheek. He’d never again have to shave or worry about stubble unless he wanted to.

  Control; is there anything more beautiful?

  He checked the time. He’d been a living breathing human less than an hour ago. He’d been real. Well, more real. No, the old definitions didn’t matter any more. This was the new real and it was as real as the old real. Right?

  It felt different, but he couldn’t find the words to describe what was missing. If anything, everything here felt too real and that didn’t make sense.

  Mark let out a slow breath, shook his head in bewilderment, and tapped one of the icons. A countdown appeared above the desk with three minutes remaining. Was this really necessary?

  Yes it is.

  Control. He could stop it any time he wanted, but need must trump desire. Always. He watched twenty seconds tick away before once again checking local time. He nodded appreciatively. Travel ti
me from the scanning facility to the M-Sof campus had been less than fifteen minutes. The staff would still be there. Two more minutes and all evidence he’d been scanned would be destroyed. All the witnesses would be dead too. Like him. Well no, not quite like him.

  He could call in a bomb threat and they’d empty the building. Should he? Should he spare their lives?

  He reached for his desk to place the call, but his hand stopped mid-way. Perfection didn’t come without a cost and control meant responsibility. Was he ready for this? Was he ready to take responsibility for these deaths? There would be more, many more. His hand wavered.

  I should call.

  No. Good as Miles was, the authorities might trace the transfer somehow. He didn’t dare. No one must know he still lived—no, that’s the wrong word—existed. At least no one beyond those few he needed to make this all possible. And those few, well, he’d deal with them soon enough.

  Mark killed the display with thirty seconds remaining. He wasn’t a ghoul. He didn’t need to know the exact second the facility exploded.

  He sat in silence, unable to think of anything but the tick of seconds passing.

  “Display the grave-cam,” he said and he stood exactly where his body—minus soon to be blown-up head—was about to be buried. By turning he caused the camera to rotate and give him a full three hundred and sixty degree view. The graveyard grounds were a healthy verdant island in a rolling sea of turn-of-the-millennium mansions. The parking lot was filled with long dark battery-powered limousines and loitering drivers in their tailored uniforms and hats tilted at jaunty angles. Smiling teeth gleamed white in well-fed faces. Several personal security chassis hung back, unobtrusive, yet close enough to lay down a vicious hail of carnage should their bosses be threatened. The sun glinted, clean and hard, off chassis armor polished to a lustrous shine. It was a beautiful scene, exactly what he’d hoped for. The weather couldn’t have been better.

  Mark panned, looking to see who attended his funeral. The distant walls surrounding the cemetery, topped with glittering mono-filament razor wire, looked tall and dangerous. A gleaming security chassis patrolled the grounds, watching for those daring enough to breach the walls in search of flowers and cast-offs of the wealthy dead. There were, he saw, enough such offerings and trinkets in this yard to feed several families for years to come.

  Mark spotted his ex-wives and litter of children.

  He’d been wanting to get all his children together in one place for longer than he could remember. Now that it had finally happened he was missing it.

  This should have happened at Christmas, not at his funeral. But he’d missed Christmas, been far too busy. With a start Mark realized he’d never spend another Christmas with any of his children. A little of his happiness leaked away.

  He watched the children with a fondness he couldn’t remember feeling during life. Children were a pain in the ass, noisy and distracting. And he missed them already. He remembered small arms clinging tight to his neck, the whispered, ‘I missed you Daddy,’ and his eyes stung.

  The press were in attendance too. He held countless press conferences before his death, explaining his choice not to be scanned. He talked about how he’d achieved things beyond his wildest dreams, how he’d lived a full life and was ready for whatever came next. The religious folks would like that, it made him seem philosophical and wise. He stressed time and time again how his choice was not due to a fault in the scanning technology. It’s perfect, he told them, but it’s not for me. I’m a Catholic, he said, please, respect my beliefs.

  Now he could work in privacy and freedom, unhindered by the prying eyes of NATU law. And if he had to break a few eggs to get things done, well, no one looked for dead people.

  After much awkward shuffling and jockeying for position, his family and friends gathered around his grave. The Catholic priest read the passages and poems that Mark’s secretary had chosen and ended the service by reading the inscription on the gravestone. The single small microphone in the grave-cam fed him an itchy metallic audio feed. Not stereo, everything sounded like it happened directly in front of him. It was annoying.

  “Here lies Mark Calvin Lokner,” intoned the priest with all the proper solemnity and sincerity such a momentous occasion deserved. “A Visionary. A Leader. A Builder of Brave New Worlds.” Mark wrote it himself.

  The funeral ended quicker than Mark would have liked and there were no outward shows of grief. His five ex-wives gazed on in stony silence, looking as if they wondered why they’d bothered to come at all. Many of his offspring gathered around their respective mothers, blinking in the morning sun and bright camera lights.

  As he panned past Lisa, his youngest daughter, she tugged at her mother’s sleeve and asked, “Why are we here, Mommy?”

  “We’re saying goodbye to your father,” Marie, his fourth ex-wife, answered.

  “Oh.” Lisa fidgeted in her crinoline dress before asking, “What was Daddy’s name?”

  Mark killed the connection to the grave-cam and once again sat at his desk.

  “That’s it,” he said aloud. “I’m dead. Thirty-eight years old and dead.”

  Just when the gray started coming in at the temples and made him look distinguished. At least he’d never get any older.

  He remembered the day he got the news. His doctor said it was brain cancer, and completely inoperable. He’d been given a year to live, best case scenario.

  No way, not Mark Lokner. It wasn’t possible. Disbelief didn’t do the feeling justice. He’d beat this. He’d win like he won everything.

  He sought out a second opinion, and then a third and a fourth. He visited all the best cancer clinics in the world, tried the most expensive treatments, taken the most experimental drugs. He lost twenty pounds in a Chumash sweat lodge, ate strange plants at the urging of a naturopath, soaked in tubs of icy water for hours on end, was pin cushioned with countless acupuncture needles, swallowed Ayurvedic potions that no doubt contained considerable quantities of heavy metals, and had been told that his fire element was out of balance. Afterwards, when the world’s foremost authority on brain cancer stood before him and said he’d have maybe three more months, he knew he wasn’t going to win. At least not without cheating.

  In the next month he managed some small level of acceptance, but only because he knew it wasn’t really the end.

  Bargaining, he’d been told, was the next stage. He laughed at the memory. Mark Lokner never begged. He grinned—no face, no mouth, no muscles, but he still felt the grin pulling his cheeks tight, showing teeth. Every minute of the last months of his life had been dedicated to this moment, this awakening, this culmination.

  What was Daddy’s name?

  He blinked rapidly and sat back, sagging against the chair.

  Every breath is a goddamned victory, right?

  He was going to spend more time with the children once things calmed down at work. It wasn’t his fault he wouldn’t be able to do that now. He hadn’t wanted to die.

  “I didn’t die, I ascended. This was always going to happen eventually. No one lives forever.” Did he believe that? He wanted to.

  “I never used to talk to myself either.” It didn’t matter. Such an unprecedented experience, surely talking to oneself under such circumstances was forgivable. After all, this was a big moment. Big, what a pathetic word. A momentous moment. No, that sounded wrong.

  It was a historic moment. Yes, that was it. History had been made. No, more like history had finally started. Everything that came before his death was but a prologue.

  Dead less than an hour and already a murderer. He resisted the urge to check the timer, it must have reached zero.

  How many people died in the scanning facility?

  Uncomfortable, Mark shied from the thought. He had no choice, it wasn’t his fault. His talk of Catholicism hung in his gut like sour milk.

  “I had no choice.” Like that justified anything.

  The past was the past, there was no changing it. Live
in the now, plan for the future.

  With the touch of an icon Mark launched the future. A massive undertaking collecting data on all markets into one place for analysis by computers hidden deep in the sub-basement of M-Sof’s Research and Development building. He looked forward to losing himself in the market data, studying it at a level of detail never before possible. Before him, hovering over the desk, a three-dimensional depiction of connections, correlations, and collations assembled into an interactive holographic model. Much of this data was not officially available, yet another testament to Miles’ skills. By focusing, Mark could do the data-equivalent of zooming in, exploding the model to see ever greater detail.

  There, his Cosa Nostra connections in Costa Rica. They’d purchased more combat chassis, Scan storage equipment, and an expensive Scan from the Anisio Jobin crèche. It was amazing that the Mafia were so quick to adopt this new technology when his own government continued to hesitate and debate. Are Scans people, should they have rights? The questions were foolish. It was only a matter of time before the aging Supreme Court Justices contemplated their own dwindling mortality.

  Do Scans have souls? Ha! Do souls matter when you are forever?

  He turned his focus to other companies, some competitors, some off-shoots of M-Sof, and watched a real-time representation of every purchase or sale made. If he wanted to zoom in enough he could witness the economic ripple from the sale of a single loaf of bread.

  It was beautiful, like focusing ever deeper on the Mandelbrot set.

  Mark sat back. How long had he been sitting here, entranced by the liquid dance of data? He wasn’t hungry; it couldn’t have been that long.

  Hunger. Right. Not real. He’d asked Miles to make sure he wouldn’t be bothered by such annoying distractions. With a regretful sigh he backed away and reduced the visualization to a rotating globe, much as the earth would appear from space if looked at in business terms.

  Nervous energy drove him out of his chair. He needed to walk and think. He paced his office. From the far end he looked back at the globe and saw it differently. It was a representation of choices made by the people with the money, influence, and will to make things happen.